The sixth annual meeting of the Accountancy Profession Strategic Forum encouraged a highly interactive exchange of perspectives on critically important issues for professional bodies, as well as on their overall strategic direction and ambition. In addition, it provided feedback to all on the existing APSF quality assurance networks while exploring the potential for international cooperation in new areas.

The accounting profession will face significant changes in the upcoming years and professional organizations, their members, and educational institutions should respond and such critically important issues for professional bodies were discussed at the forum through topics like Ethics and integrity in the business environment; corporate reporting and audit: How to drive quality and enhance governance; The digital challenge:How to build a sustainable PAO offering to support members; What should PAOs be doing in 2020 and in 2015- and How can ambitions be realized.

While speaking about the future of accounting profession, Mr. Mamas Koutsoyiannis, CEO of Moore Stephens said that “The accountancy profession is about to face the new challenges of the new era such as: block -chain, cryptocurrency, social media evolution, artificial Intelligence, GDPR, the new Financial Institutions regulations in the digital era, as well as the more and more demanding stakeholders of the financial statements, that require accurate, current and future disclosures with high quality. Changes are done in a more rapid pace which requires sharpness and flexibility in decision making! These can be achieved by embracing new technology in the profession, embracing innovation, embracing ethics, by ensuring this is shared to the professional accountants by collaboration and continues education.”

In his closing words, Mr. Koutsoyiannis said that “Currently the scale of the regulatory changes and transformation looks big, however the accountancy profession has a long history of re-inventing itself and I assure you that accounting profession will be soon up to the standard and level to serve and cover the current challenges of the modern business world.